News

News

WASHINGTON - Washington is a city that wheezes. It has one of the highest rates of asthma in the country. Those who suffer from the disease cluster in the city's poorest communities, where asthmatic children are 10 times more likely to visit the emergency room than in wealthy neighborhoods. Some of the most dangerous air for these children to breathe, studies say, is laced with exhaust.

So advocates were alarmed when officials announced this year that they're planning to open a shelter for homeless families within a football field's length of the District of Columbia's largest bus garage - one of the city's biggest producers of exhaust, a known asthma trigger.